Education

The Education Challenge:
  • Education plays a tremendous role in the efforts of poverty alleviation in developing nations.
  • At Kenya’s independence in 1963, illiteracy, together with poverty and disease, were identified as the three greatest enemies in Kenya, and therefore became the focus of the nation’s development goals.
  • To date, despite spending slightly over 33% of the national budget on education, the sector still suffers from enormous challenges.

 

The C.H.A.N.C.E. Global Initiative was developed with the intention of providing relief to the educational challenges facing poverty-stricken communities in developing countries. The C.H.A.N.C.E. Global Initiative will provide a quality educational program through the Carson Academy of Excellence.

 

The academy will be a model school that provides children from poor families the opportunity to acquire a good education (K-8th) and uplift themselves as well as their families from abject poverty. Education will give these children a fighting chance in the stiff competition for space in Kenya’s institutions of higher learning and abroad.

 

The Carson Academy of Excellence will offer a good educational foundation, capable of preparing and giving them a competitive edge in the local and global job market. At the core of the school and all of its activities will be its reliance on a trans-disciplinary approach to teaching, learning, knowledge generation, and dissemination.

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Nutrition

Nutrition
  • One in every 19 Kenyan children do not survive to the age of 5.
  • 35% of children in Kenya under the age of 5 are stunted; 7% are wasted and 16% are underweight (Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics).
  • The prevalence of under-nutrition is particularly high in Kenya urban slums where, for example, stunting among children under the age of 5 is more than 40% (Global Nutrition Project).
  • In Mukuru, at the end of 2008, the average monthly income of 35% of households was less than KES 2,000, while 22% reported no monthly income. Therefore, at the time of the survey, 55% households were living well below the food poverty line of 1,474 KES/adult/month and overall poverty line of KES 2,913/adult/month (Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics).
  • Due to extreme poverty, the average slum dweller earns between KES 100 – 200 or $0.96 – $1.92 USD per day. That is not nearly enough money to feed oneself, let alone feed an entire family. Thus, slum dwellers rely on the cheapest source of proteins consequently leading to extremely poor diets. Maize (corn) is the main food eaten in the slums and rural areas. If they are lucky, they will have some greens or possibly beans to go along with the maize and meat is simply out of the question. However, maize has very little nutritional value as it only fills the stomach, but does not provide the much-needed nutrients to sustain the human body (Foundation for International Cardiac and Children’s Services).

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Health

The Health Challenge

Quality healthcare is often out of reach for most slum residents, and is actually considered a luxury. The cost of formal health services is too expensive for the limited budgets of families living in slum communities. Informal and untrained chemists exist throughout the slums, but their medications are often wrong, expired, and unregulated.

 

According to a report prepared by the African Population and Health Research Center, the urban poor fare worse than their rural counterparts on most health indicators. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, interpersonal violence injuries, and road traffic accidents account for more than two-thirds of the deaths among people ages 5 years and older.

 

The poor health status of slum children is in part due to continuous exposure to environmental hazards coupled with a lack of basic amenities. Sanitation related and respiratory diseases such as diarrhea, amoebiasis, typhoid, and malaria are very prevalent and the chances of becoming ill are high due to the poor drainage and sanitation, poor ventilation systems in the homes, and inadequate water systems.

There are inadequate wastewater systems throughout the slums which means sewage is directed to open trenches, which is particularly a health hazard for children.

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